The Undiscovered Chekhov Page 3

“Which conductor?

  “How the devil am I supposed to know which conductor? Some conductor, it’s as simple as that.... You don’t need a ticket, he said, you can travel without one... so I didn’t get a ticket.”

  “Well, we’ll discuss this further at the station. Madam, your ticket!”

  The door creaks, opens, and to everyone’s surprise Petrovna enters.

  “Oh Lord, what a hard time I had finding my compartment.... How’s one supposed to tell them apart, they all look the same.... And they didn’t let Pakhom get on, the snakes.... Where’s my bag?”

  “Oh!... Temptations from Below!... I threw it out the window for you. I thought we’d left you behind!”

  “You threw it where?”

  “Out the window. How was I to know?”

  “Oh, thank you very much! Who told you to do that, you old hag! May the Lord forgive me! What am I going to do? Why didn’t you throw your own bag out, you bitch! Its your ugly mug you should have thrown out the window! Ohh! May both your eyes fall out!”

  “You’ll have to send a telegram from the next station!” the laughing crowd suggests.

  Petrovna starts wailing loudly and spouting profanities. Her friend, also crying, is clutching her bag. The conductor comes in.

  “Whose things are these?” he shouts, holding up Petrovna’s bag.

  “Pret-t-t-y!” the old man sitting opposite whispers to me, nodding his head at the pretty girl. “Mmm... pret-t-y... pity I don’t have any chloroform on me! One whiff and she’d be out! Then I could kiss her for all I’m worth!”

  The man in the straw hat stirs uncomfortably, and in a loud voice curses his long legs.

  “Scientists,” he mumbles. “Scientists... you can’t fight the nature of things... scientists! Ha! How come they haven’t come up with something so we can screw our legs on and off at will?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with me.... Speak to the public prosecutor!” the inspector sitting next to me shouts.

  In the far corner two high school boys, a noncommis-sioned officer, and a blue-eyed young man are huddled together playing a game of cards by the light of their cigarettes.

  A tall lady is sitting haughtily to my right. She reeks of powder and patchouli.

  “Oh how absolutely divine it is to be en route!” some goose is whispering into her ear, her voice sugary... nauseatingly sugary... frenchifying her g’s, ns, and n’s. “One’s rapprochement is never as quick and as charming as it is when one is en route. Oh, how I do love being en route!”

  A kiss... another... what the hell is going on?

  The pretty girl wakes up, looks around, and unconsciously rests her head against the man sitting next to her, the devotee of Justice... but the idiot is asleep.

  The train stops. A halt. “The train will be stopping for two minutes!” a hoarse bass voice mutters outside the railroad car. Two minutes pass, two more.... Five minutes pass, ten, twenty, and the train is still standing. What the hell’s going on! I get off the train and make my way to the locomotive.

  “Ivan Matevitch! Get a move on! Damn!” the chief conductor shouts from the locomotive.

  The engine driver crawls out from under the locomotive, red, wet, a piece of soot sticking to his nose...

  “Damn you! Damn you!” he shouts up at the chief conductor. “Get off my back! Are you blind? Can’t you see what’s going on? God! Aaah... I wish you’d all go to hell! This is supposed to be a locomotive? This is no locomotive, it’s a pile of junk! I’m not traveling any farther on this!”

  “What’re we going to do?”

  “You can do whatever you like! How about getting another locomotive—I refuse to travel on this one! Don’t you understand?”

  The driver’s helpers run around the broken-down engine, banging, shouting... the station chief in a red cap tells his assis-tant Jewish jokes... it starts to rain... I head back to my railroad car... the stranger in the straw hat and the dark gray shirt rushes by... he’s carrying a suitcase. God... it’s my suitcase!

  THE

  TRIAL

  THE HUT OF KUZMA Egorov, the shopkeeper. Hot and stifling. Damned mosquitoes and flies buzz near eyes and ears, a real nuisance. There’s a cloud of tobacco smoke, yet it doesn’t smell of tobacco but of salted fish. A heaviness hangs in the air, on everyone’s faces, in the buzzing of the mosquitoes.

  There is a large table and on it scissors, a jar with a green-ish ointment, a saucer filled with walnut shells, paper bags, empty bottles. Seated around the table are Kuzma Egorov himself, Theophan Manafuilov the village priest, Ivanov the medical assistant, the village elder, Mikhailo the bass, Parfenti Ivanovitch the godfather, and Fortunatov, a policeman from town who is visiting Aunt Anise. At a respectful distance from the table stands Kuzma Egorov’s son, Seraphion, who is apprenticed to a barber in town and has come home for the holidays. Seraphion feels very uneasy, and with a trembling hand fidgets with his mustache. Kuzma Egorov’s hut also serves provisionally as a medical “station,” and out in the hall the ill have gathered: just now they brought in an old woman with a broken rib. She is lying there moaning, waiting for the medical assistant to finally grace her with his attention. Outside by the window a crowd has gathered to see Kuzma Egorov give his son a flogging.

  “You keep saying that I’m lying,” Seraphion says to his father, “which is why I intend to keep things short. We are in the nineteenth century, Father. Words are meaningless, because theories, as you yourself surely know, simply can’t exist without some practical basis.”

  “Shut up!” Kuzma Egorov sternly shouts. “Don’t change the subject; just give me the meat and potatoes. What have you done with my money?”

  “Your money? But... surely, you yourself must be clever enough to see that I would never have touched your money. After all, you’re not hoarding it for me... I would never be tempted!”

  “Be frank with us, Seraphion Kuzmitch!” the village priest exclaims. “Why do you think we are questioning you? We want to set you on the straight and narrow path to righteousness. Your father only wants what is good for you.... So he asked us over.... You must be frank with us.... Did you sin? Was it you who took the twenty-five rubles lying in your father’s chest of drawers, or wasn’t it?”

  Seraphion spits into the corner and says nothing. “Answer!” Kuzma Egorov shouts, banging his fist on the table. “Was it you or wasn’t it?”

  “Fine, have it your way, say it was me who took it! But there is no point in shouting, Father! No point in banging your fist till the table breaks into a thousand pieces! I have never taken your money, and if I did it was out of necessity... I am a living person, an animated noun, and I need money. I am not a rock!”

  “Go earn yourself as much money as you need, then you won’t have to rob me blind. You’re not the only one in this family! There are six others!”

  “I am fully aware of that, but due to the weakness of my health, as you know, I find it difficult to earn money. And how you can reproach me for nothing more than a piece of bread, you will have to answer to the Lord God himself...”

  “Oh, weakness of health, is it? What’s so difficult about being a barber? All you have to do is cut a bit here and a bit there, and even that’s too much for you!”

  “You call that a job? It’s not a job, it’s a feeble excuse for a job. With my education I can’t work in such circumstances!” “You aren’t reasoning correctly, Seraphion Kuzmitch!” the village priest says. “Your job is honorable, noble. After all, you

  work in the biggest town in the province, and you shave and barber noble, highbrow people. Even generals need your ser-vices.”

  “Ha! I can tell you a thing or two about generals.”

  The medical assistant is slightly tipsy: “According to my medical opinion,” he says, “you are turpentine and nothing else!”

  “We know your medicine!... Who, if I may ask, mistook the drunk carpenter for a corpse last year and almost dissected him? If he hadn’t woken up, you would have cut his stomach open.
And who, may I ask, always mixes castor oil with hempseed oil?”

  “That’s medicine for you!”

  “And who sent Malanya to kingdom come? You administered laxatives and then constipators, and then laxatives again, and she finally broke down. It’s not people you should be treating but, pardon my frankness, dogs!”

  “May Malanya rest in peace,” Kuzma Egorov says. “May she rest in peace. It wasn’t she who took the money, it’s not her we’re talking about... by the way, you didn’t give the money to that Alonya, did you?”

  “Alonya! Shame on you to speak that woman’s name in front of a policeman and a man of the cloth!”

  “So out with it! Did you take the money or didn’t you?” The village elder hobbles out from behind the table, lights

  a match by striking it over his knee, and deferentially holds it up to the policeman’s pipe.

  “Damn!” the policeman shouts. “You filled my nose with powder!”

  Puffing on his pipe, he gets up from the table, walks up to Seraphion, and maliciously looking him in the eye, shouts in a shrill voice: “Who the hell are you? What is this? Why! Huh? What does all this mean? Why don’t you answer the question? Insubordination? Taking someone’s money like that! Shut up! Answer! Speak! Answer!”

  “If...”

  “Shut up!”

  “If you could... be just a little quieter! If... You don’t scare me! Who do you think you are! You—you’re just an idiot, it’s as simple as that! If my father wishes to throw me to the dogs, then so be it!... Go on, torture me! Beat me!”

  “Shut up! No conversation! I can see right through you! Are you a thief? What are you? Shut up! Do you know who I am? No debates!”

  “Punishment is inevitable,” the village priest sighs. “When criminals don’t ease their guilt with a confession, then, Kuzma Egorov, flogging is inevitable. My conclusion is: it’s inevitable!”

  “Whip him!” Mikhailo the bass says, in such a thundering baritone that everyone jumps.

  “For the last time: Was it you, yes or no?”

  “If this is what you want... fine... You can flog me! I am ready!”

  “You will be flogged!” Kuzma Egorov resolves, and he rises from the table, blood rushing to his neck.

  The crowd outside pushes closer to the window. In the hall the sick flock to the door, trying to peek in. Even the old woman with the broken rib is craning her head.

  “Bend over!” Kuzma Egorov says.

  Seraphion tears off his jacket, crosses himself, and calmly bends over the bench.

  “You may flog me,” he says.

  Kuzma Egorov picks up the strap, looks into the crowd for a few seconds as if waiting for someone to help him, and then begins.

  “One! Two! Three!” Mikhailo counts in a deep bass. “Eight! Nine!”

  The village priest stands in the corner, leafing through his book with lowered eyes.

  “Twenty! Twenty-one!”

  “Enough!” Kuzma Egorov says.

  “More!” whispers Fortunatov the policeman. “More! More! Give it to him!”

  “My conclusion is: definitely a few more!” the village priest says, looking up from his book.

  “He didn’t even wince!” the people outside mutter.

  The sick people in the hall make way, and Kuzma Egorov’s wife enters the room, her starched dress crackling.

  “Kuzma!” she says to her husband. “What’s this money I found in your pocket? Isn’t it the money you were just looking for?”

  “Oh, it is! Seraphion, get up, we’ve found the money! I put it in my pocket yesterday and forgot all about it!”

  “More!” Fortunatov mumbles. “He must be beaten! Give it to him!”

  “We found the money! Get up!”

  Seraphion gets up, puts his jacket on, and sits down at the table. Drawn-out silence. Embarrassed, the village priest blows his nose in his handkerchief.

  “Forgive me,” Kuzma Egorov mumbles, turning to his son. “Well, you know, damn! Who would have thought we’d find it just like that?”

  “It’s all right. After all it’s not the first time.... Please don’t worry. I am always ready to suffer any torment.”

  “Have a drink... it’ll help heal the wounds.”

  Seraphion drinks, lifts his bluish nose high into the air, and with a heroic flourish walks out of the hut. For a long time afterward Fortunatov the policeman paces up and down the courtyard, his face red, his eyes goggling, muttering:

  “More! More! Give it to him!”

  CONFESSION—

  OR

  OLYA,

  ZHENYA,

  ZOYA

  A

  LETTER

  MA CHÈRE, YOU ASKED me, among other things, in .your sweet letter, my dear unforgettable friend, why, although I am thirty-nine years old, I have to this day never married.

  My dear friend, I hold family life in the highest possible esteem. I never married simply because goddamn Fate was not propitious. I set out to get married a good fifteen times, but did not manage to because everything in this world—and particularly in my life—seems to hinge on chance. Everything depends on it! Chance, that despot! Let me cite a few incidents thanks to which I still lead a contemptibly lonely life.

  First Incident

  It was a delightful June morning. The sky was as clear as the clearest Prussian blue. The sun played on the waters of the river and brushed the dewy grass with its rays. The river and the meadow were strewn with rich diamonds of light. The birds were singing, as if with one voice. We walked down the path of yellowish sand, and with happy hearts drank in the sweet aromas of the June morning. The trees looked upon us so gently, and whispered all kinds of nice—I’m sure—and tender things. Olya Gruzdofska’s hand (she’s now married to the son of your chief of police) lay in mine, and her tiny little finger kept brushing over my thumb.... Her cheeks glowed, and her eyes... O ma chère, what exquisite eyes! There was so much charm, truth, innocence, joyousness, childish naïveté, in those blue sparkling eyes of hers! I fell in love with her blond braids, and with the little footprints her tiny feet left in the sand.

  “I have devoted my life, Olga Maksimovna, to science!” I whispered, terrified that her little finger would slip off my thumb. “The future will bring with it a professorial chair... on my conscience there are questions... scientific ones... my life is filled with hard work, troubles, lofty... I mean... well, basically, I’m going to be a professor... I am an honest man, Olga Maksimovna... I’m not rich, but... I need someone who with her presence... (Olya blushed and shyly lowered her eyes; her little finger was trembling) who with her presence... Olya! Look up at the sky! Look how pure it is... my life is just as boundlessly pure!”

  My tongue didn’t have time to scramble out of this quagmire of drivel: Olya suddenly lifted her head, snatched her hand away from mine, and clapped her palms together. A flock of geese with little goslings was waddling towards us. Olya ran over to them and, laughing out loud, stretched her arms toward them.... O what beauteous arms, ma chere!

  “Squawk, squawk, squawk!” the geese called out, craning their necks, peering at Olya from the side.

  “Here goosey-goose, here goosey-goose!” Olya shouted, and reached out to touch a little gosling.

  The gosling was quite bright for its age. It ran from Olya’s approaching fingers straight to its daddy, a very large foolish- looking gander, and seemed to complain to him. The gander spread his wings. Naughty Olya reached out to touch some other goslings. At that moment something terrible happened: the gander lowered his neck to the ground and, hissing like a snake, marched fiercely toward Olya. Olya squealed and retreated, the gander close at her heels. Olya looked back, squealed even louder, and went completely white. Her pretty, girlish face was twisted with terror and despair. It was as if she were being chased by three hundred devils.

  I rushed to help her and banged the gander on the head with my walking stick. The damn gander still managed to quickly snap at the hem of her dress. With wi
de eyes and terror-stricken face, trembling all over, Olya fell into my arms.

  “You’re such a coward!” I said to her.

  “Thrash that goose!” she moaned, and burst into tears.

  Suddenly I no longer saw naïveté or childishness in her frightened little face—but idiocy! Ma chère, I cannot abide faintheartedness! I cannot imagine being married to a fainthearted, cowardly woman!

  The gander ruined everything. After calming Olya down, I went home. I couldn’t get that expression of hers—cowardly to the point of idiocy—out of my mind. In my eyes, Olya had lost all her charm. I dropped her.

  Second Incident

  As you know, my friend, I am a writer. The gods ignited within my breast the sacred flame, and I have seen it as my duty to take up the pen! I am a high priest of Apollo! Every beat of my heart, every breath I take, in short—I have sacrificed everything on the altar of my muse. I write and I write and I write... take away my pen, and I’m dead! You laugh! You do not believe me! I swear most solemnly that it is true!

  But as you surely know, ma chère, this world of ours is a bad place for art. The world is big and bountiful, but a writer can find no place for himself in it! A writer is an eternal orphan, an exile, a scapegoat, a defenseless child! I divide mankind into two categories: writers and enviers! The former write, and the latter die of jealousy and spend all their time plotting and scheming against them. I have always Men prey, and always will, to these plotters! They have ruined my life! They have taken over the writing business, calling themselves editors and publishers, striving with all their might to ruin us writers! Damn them!

  Anyway.... For a while I was courting Zhenya Pshikova. You must remember her, that sweet, dreamy, black-haired girl... she’s now married to your neighbor, Karl Ivanovitch Wanze (à propos, in German Wanze means “bedbug.” But please don’t tell Zhenya, she’d be very upset). Zhenya was in love with the writer within me. She believed in my calling as deeply as I did. She cherished my hopes. But she was so young! She had not yet grasped the aforementioned division of humanity into two categories! She did not believe in this division! She did not believe it, and one fine day... catastrophe!